Sagaria (65 page)

“No slave mines for this one,” said Casspol through his mirth. “Reckon we’ll just have him as a sandwich.”

“Fools before you have mocked me and lived to regret it,” stormed Flip.

“Keep out of this, Flip,” said Sir Tombin urgently. “Flee for your life while you still can.”

“And bow down before these petty tyrants? Never.”

Samzing gave him a sad look, but said nothing.

It’s about time that I came up with a plan
, thought the only part of Flip’s mind that remained cool and rational.
An idea. Anything
.

An idea, that’s it!

“This is your last chance to plead for mercy,” he cried. “Let the girl loose and beg for my compassion. Otherwise, you will pay with your souls.”

This provoked a further round of guffawing from the two Shadow Knights. The girl was able to squirm out of their grasp and run to the shelter of Sir Tombin, who put his free arm around her quivering shoulders.

“I think we should keep the little rat alive after all, Casspol,” howled Tanktite. “He’ll provide endless entertainment back at the castle.”

“Have you the first idea what you’re doing, Flip?” said Samzing under the cover of the Shadow Knights’ distraction.

“Yes,” Flip replied. “The first idea. That’s exactly what I have.”

Somewhere high overhead, there was a faint but distinctive sound. It jolted even the Shadow Knights out of their hilarity. Everyone looked upward.

At first, there was nothing to be observed, then they all could see a tiny pinpoint of moving green light. As it swooped and whirled across the dark heavens, it grew larger, until it outshone the feeble moon of the Shadow World.

“Oh,” breathed Samzing respectfully, “but you truly are the clever, clever one, young Flip.”

“Tell Sir Tombin to prepare himself,” Flip said out of the corner of his mouth. “I can account for just one of these pieces of trash. He will have to take the other.”

Samzing sidled away from the wall and joined the Frogly Knight. The two surreptitiously leaned their heads together as the wizard spoke a few words urgently into Sir Tombin’s ear. From the corner of his eye, Flip saw the Frogly Knight nod once. It was enough. Sir Tombin knew what he had to do.

All this time, the green light in the sky had been getting larger and brighter, and it was clear that it was heading in their direction with colossal speed. There was a noise too, a whining that bespoke great power.

Samzing started pulling Sir Tombin away from where the Shadow Knights stood gaping skyward. The Frogly Knight, burdened by the girl clinging to his side, stumbled, and the wizard had to reach out to help him keep his balance. After a brief muttered conference, Samzing unpeeled her from his old friend and held her comfortingly, murmuring reassurance to her. Flip could see her shoulders shaking as she wept in terror.

Now the approaching object was bright enough to light up the terrain around them with a green, uncanny sheen. It was beginning to occur at last to the two Shadow Knights that they might possibly be in danger, that their plan to have themselves a little sadistic entertainment was going awry. Casspol lifted his sword as if it might somehow protect him from whatever was falling from the heavens, Tanktite looked as if he’d prefer to bolt rather than contest the matter.

Now the green light, the lime-green light, was so close to impact, that it seemed larger than the sky itself. Even Flip, who had summoned it, found himself cringing away in terror. He had to will himself not to flee into one of the crevices of the wall.

When the Lime Jello Pudding thought struck, it was with a
ssssspppplatttt
. It was so noisome and loud, Flip thought that his eardrums might never recover, and even if they did, they would do so before his stomach did.

Casspol, the bigger and fractionally more brutal of the two Shadow Knights, never had a chance. Robes, armor, weaponry, bones, blood, guts, flesh and all, he was instantly rendered into the same consistency as the Lime Jello Pudding thought that had crashed down upon him. Almost every last pulverized shred of him was squirted straight downward through the cracks in the mud by the force of the impact. All there was left, as the Lime Jello Pudding wobblingly reconstituted itself, was an unpleasant odor that almost immediately dissipated.

“Such is the fate of all who dare tempt the wrath of the Adventurer Extraordinaire!” cried Flip, trying to keep the tremble out of his squeak.

The remaining Shadow Knight, Tanktite, was staring down aghast at himself. The few blobs of his comrade in arms that had failed to be hammered into the ground had jetted sideways to coat Tanktite’s front in a thin, oily iridescent layer of slime.

His face a terrible green and red mask, he turned toward Flip, the architect of this sudden devastation. Swinging his sword in a whistling arc, he raced toward his small tormentor.

“
Die
!
” was the solitary word that came from his lips before his brain realized that it was no longer connected to the rest of his body.

While his body collapsed with an ungainly crash, his helmeted head kept going, bouncing and rolling until it came to a soggy halt at the base of the wall, directly beneath Flip.

Flip looked up and saw the Frogly Knight regarding the gore-smeared blade of Xaraxeer with an expression almost of regret.

“Wow,” said Flip. “That was quick.”

“You spared me having to deal with the other of this craven pair likewise,” said Sir Tombin sadly, “but I would rather have had to slay neither. I have no taste for killing, even when the dead are as vile as these two were.”

Flip’s spirits, which had been bubbling, slowly sobered as it dawned on him that he had deliberately taken a man’s life. Sir Tombin was right. That was never a cause for jubilation. If one crowed about it, laughed about it or triumphed in it, then one was no better than the Shadow Knights themselves. Once again his stomach jerked queasily, and he looked around for somewhere discreet to throw up.

He was distracted from his nausea by the Lime Jello Pudding.

“Always glad to be of service,” it said to Flip with what he supposed was a grin, “but I’m one of those ideas a person can’t have more than once …”

And who would want to
? thought Flip feverishly.

“… so, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be on my way.”

With a sort of protoplasmic nod to each of the companions in turn – even to Memo, who had at last found the courage to poke his head out of Samzing’s pocket – and with something that might have been a bow, but might just have been a structural malfunction, toward the saved girl, the Lime Flavor Jello Pudding turned away and lurched off in a torrent of vaguely lavatorial sucking noises. Soon it was lost to them over the brow of a small upwelling of the land.

Flip discovered that he’d been holding his breath for rather too long a time and, trying to make it as unobvious to the others as possible what he was doing, he let it out before he fainted. The girl they’d saved was looking at him with the kind of adoring gaze he wished Jinnia could be taught.

“There, there,” Sir Tombin was saying to her comfortingly. “You’re all right now. You’re among friends.”

It was obvious to Flip that she comprehended not one word of what Sir Tombin had said. Even so, the tone of Sir Tombin’s voice was communicating itself to her, and still she regarded Flip with a disconcertingly stark devotion.

“What’s your name, child?” added the Frogly Knight, affectionately pushing a hank of her greasy hair back from her forehead.

Hearing the question in his voice at last, she turned away from Flip and looked up at the wearily smiling face of Sir Tombin.

“You don’t understand a thing we’re saying to you, do you?” he said gently.

Her face remained blank.

“That’s all right. It’s not important.” He cupped her chin in his webbed hand and smiled more broadly at her.

She must have liked what she saw in his eyes, because she threw her arms as far as they would go around his ample belly and hugged him.

“Just a child,” said Sir Tombin to Samzing, his voice betraying the fact that he was near tears. “Just a child.”

“We must take her with us,” declared the wizard. “She can ride Snowmane. Perhaps we’ll be able to find her parents, if she has any, or at least someone who knows her and is willing to take her in.” He too had a certain catch in his speech that bespoke strong emotion.

Sir Tombin tried again. “We’re your friends,” he said to the girl. “It’s dangerous here. You must come with us.”

“Maybe she’ll follow us if we just start to walk,” suggested Flip.

“Good idea,” said Sir Tombin, nodding.

He patted the girl clumsily on the shoulder, and mimed himself walking toward the wall, where Flip stood.

Her mouth formed a little “o” of pleasure as she looked back toward the one she obviously regarded as her savior. Letting out a little giggle that was almost
frightening, coming as it did from her tear-stained face, she ran to him, her arms open. Before he knew it, she had scooped him up from his perch and was holding him next to her cheek.

“Steady on, steady on,” said Flip nervously, wriggling in her grasp.

Samzing laughed. “You’re her hero, Flip,” he said. “Might as well enjoy it while you can.”

Sir Tombin was looking down at the armor of the Shadow Knight he’d beheaded.

“The rest of you,” he said, “take the girl back to our fireside and introduce her to Snowmane, will you? There’s something I have to do first. I’ll be with you in only a few moments.”

Glancing at him, Flip saw distaste and determination chasing each other across Sir Tombin’s broad face.

“Yes,” he said, suddenly fathoming what the Frogly Knight was about to do. “Let’s get going, shall we?”

When they got back to where they’d been sitting, they discovered that the paltry fire Sir Tombin had lit had gone out. Snowmane was delighted to see them, and the strange, dirt-streaked girl was equally glad to see the stallion, With a whimper of joy she put Flip down on the ground (with, he noted sourly, a distinct lack of ceremony) and ran to the horse, putting the side of her head against Snowmane’s big, muscular shoulder.

“Guess you’ve suddenly become yesterday’s hero, Flip,” said Samzing sardonically. “Women are like that, you know,” he added and smiled.

Within a few moments, Snowmane evidently decided that while this newcomer wasn’t Perima, she was an adequate substitute for the time being. His big lips slurping, he licked her outstretched palm.

Huh
, thought Flip.
Samzing’s right. Women!

A clanking noise came out of the darkness. Sir Tombin had accomplished what he set out to accomplish. Flip turned to watch as a tall, armored figure of what looked, to all intents and purposes, like a Shadow Knight emerged from the gloom. In one steel-gloved hand, it held a green tunic and a hat with a feather longer than a man’s arm. Sir Tombin had done his best to clean the worst of the gore off the armor with the dead man’s robe, which he’d discarded, but a smear of dark blood still besmirched the silver breastplate.

Neither Samzing nor Flip were disturbed by the apparition, having guessed Sir Tombin’s plan, but the girl was plainly terrified. Cowering against
Snowmane’s flank, she put her fist in her mouth to smother a scream.

It must be like a nightmare for her
, thought Flip, forgiving her for the slight she’d delivered.
She thought the Shadow Knights were gone from her life for good, or at least for a while, and now apparently one of them still lives and is seeking her out.

With a great display of nonchalance he trotted over to Sir Tombin’s suited figure and looked up at it.

“Greetings, Sir Tombin,” he said in a friendly manner, glancing over at the girl to make sure she could see his lack of concern.

She slowly lowered her hand, but still looked ready to turn and flee at the slightest provocation.

“Zort varam?”
she said, pointing at the armored knight.

“
Padano nim vada
,” squeaked a new voice. Memo. Flip could see a pair of thick-rimmed spectacles peering out of Samzing’s robe and deduced that the memorizer must be behind them.

The spectacles turned toward Sir Tombin and himself.

“She asked if you were a Shadow Knight,” the memorizer explained. “I told her you weren’t, that you were a friend. That we are all her friends.”

“You understand the language she speaks?” exclaimed Samzing.

“Yes,” said Memo, twisting around to stare up at the wizard’s face. “She speaks a crude and old-fashioned form of the ancient language, Tamshadi. It was the original tongue shared by Sagaria and the Shadow World, when Tamshado belonged to both. According to the books in the library at Qarnapheeran, it has been extinct for many hundreds of years. Obviously, the books are wrong.”

“And you learned it from the books?”

“As much as I could, yes. There was a phonetics guide in one of them, but I’ve no doubt my pronunciation must sound pretty barbarous to her. Still, as you’ve seen, she and I can understand one another.”

“Then,” said Sir Tombin, his voice sounding echoey from within the dead Shadow Knight’s helmet, “ask her who she is and where she comes from.”